


cherry-colored love (on and on and on)

by andawaywego



Series: it for me [1]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: A little angst, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, No ghosts AU, Sexual Content, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, except Edmund, i promise it’s not as depressing as it might seem, it’s gonna get smutty, people say some swears, some good ol’ fashioned pining, things are happy and everyone is alive in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: “‘And I know you already have a soulmate,’ she says to Jamie, the soft-eyed, North star love of her life, gone pale and careful. ‘But every time I touch you, I can’t help wishing it were me.’”[Dani tries her best to hide from Fate. Too bad it finds her anyway.]
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, background Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma
Series: it for me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135049
Comments: 164
Kudos: 1502
Collections: finished works





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yeah, i’mma be that lame person who starts this fic off with a quote. i can do whatever i want because i’m an adult.
> 
> this exists in an AU with no ghosts because i felt like it. see previous note about being an adult.
> 
> it’s also simultaneously set in that fun universe where you leave a mark on your soulmate the first time you touch them. in this, the colors vary. soooo. 
> 
> either way: enjoy, babes.

____________

“That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it.

To see such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.”

— Maggie Nelson, _Bluets_

____________

Everyone tells them that it’s meant to be.

That it doesn’t matter whether or not she got the mark the moment they touched because _Eddie_ did. 

Tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy befriends girl, boy and girl play tag together, girl catches boy and leaves a soul mark the size of her hand on boy’s arm.

In the moments after, Eddie stopped running and stood still, eyes wide with bewilderment for something he’d only heard stories about. And then the other kids stopped too.

They looked Eddie over. Looked Dani over and that was when the fuss began. Eventually, a teacher found them, took one look at Eddi’s black-marked arm, gave them both a bright smile and took them inside to call their parents and share the good news.

Except—

The hand Dani used to grab Eddie’s arm was bare. No mark to be seen. Just as normal as it had been before she caught him.

Her mother burst into the school, frantic with the thrill of not needing to _worry_ about her daughter after all, only to find—

Nothing.

“There has to be some kind of a mistake,” her mother said to anyone who would listen. 

Eddie’s mother repeated the phrase while Eddie and Dani sat side-by-side in the school office, swinging their feet back and forth and not speaking to one another. Whenever Dani looked up, Eddie was staring at her and smiling and Dani isn’t quite sure what to do with that.

There isn’t a mistake.

There isn’t.

The truth of the matter is this: Dani left Eddie with a soulmark that he did not leave on her.

A strange occurrence.

Uncommon, but not unheard of—or so her mother tells her for years, citing old newspaper articles from decades past that she never seems to actually be in possession of. It doesn’t mean they aren’t meant to be.

It doesn’t mean that, when Eddie kisses her at ten-years-old, she has any reason to feel...wrong. Off.

It just means that their story is a little different. That’s all.

 _You’re lucky_ , their parents tell them as they grow up crushed beneath the weight of the whole thing’s foregone conclusion. _You’re so lucky to find each other so young_. 

And the thing is: if you tell someone something long enough, eventually they’ll start to believe you.

So, when Eddie drops to one knee two months after they return home from college and asks her to marry him, Dani says yes. Of course she will. She’s his soulmate, right? That’s what soulmates do.

They find each other and love each other and spend the rest of their lives together.

When Eddie says, “I love you,” Dani says, “I love you, too,” because it’s true. She does. He’s her best friend. She’s grown up pressed to his side, trapped but not necessarily chafing against the walls that keep her there. Not at first.

Not until—

______________

“ _Eddie_?”

The truck is stopped just ahead, it’s tail lights red and flashing and so bright that Dani’s eyes take a moment to adjust. People are gathered around, shocked, talking to one another. Someone is running off to call an ambulance.

The truck driver is getting out of his cab, knees nearly collapsing from the realization of what’s just happened. And Eddie—

He’s breathing still, hands twitching, reaching out for something that they’ll never find and there’s _so much blood_.

The hard gravel of the road bites into Dani’s knees and palms, scraping against her skin. Beneath the sleeve of his sweater is Eddi’s soul mark. It’s right there. But she can’t see it.

She’s cold. So _cold_ , like she’s freezing over or something and Eddie is—

He’s breathing still. He’s bleeding and he’s breathing and there’s a frantic voice in the back of Dani’s head that is begging and praying and pleading for this to be a dream. She has to wake up. Any moment now, she’ll blink and be back in her bed. Safe and sound. She’ll roll over and Eddie will be there, sound asleep. Snoring softly in that way her mother says she’ll get used to.

She’s going to wake up. That’s what’s going to happen.

Eddie gasps in a breath, his lungs expanding against his shattered rib cage, his bones nothing but loose gravel in his skin. His fingers brush Dani’s knee, smearing blood against the fabric of her stockings and—

Someone is touching her shoulder. Someone is pulling her away. There are lights now, ambulance and police lights, and too many people are talking at once and someone is screaming—piercing and splintered and violent.

It isn’t until they’re lifting Eddie’s broken body onto a gurney that Dani realizes it’s her.

______________

If there’s a word meant specifically to signify someone left to mourn their fiancé, Dani doesn’t know what it is. So, she is thrust into the role of the widow by default.

It’s not acting. It’s not pretend. Eddie is gone and dead and buried with the black mark of her five-year-old hand around his arm and that’s more than enough to keep Dani from sleeping most nights.

She quits her job—too exhausted to imagine giving too much more of herself and getting nothing in return. Her mother tells her it’s a mistake, that she’ll regret it in time, but Dani can’t help but think of it as the first decision she has ever made for herself. And _only_ for herself.

People hug her. People take her hand and squeeze it, like it holds tangible evidence of Eddie’s existence—of their relationship with one another. They tell her to be strong. 

_It gets better_. 

But it doesn’t.

People are constantly dropping food off at her house, as if the ability to cook for herself had been lost with Eddie. They attach cards to their gift baskets and flower bouquets.

_Sorry for your loss._

_With deepest sympathy._

_We share your grief._

They drop by unannounced and wearing black, wanting to comfort her, speak to her, reach out and soothe her with a touch. 

Eventually, she stops answering the door. Lets her mother get it. Lets the phone ring. She finds an old pair of winter gloves in the back of her closet and puts them on, tired of the slide of skin against her own. 

All it does is remind her what was missing. And there were so many things she couldn’t give Eddie in the end, but the pale skin of her left palm is the sorriest one of them all.

Two months. That’s as long as she can manage. Two months and then she’s emptying her savings account and packing her bags. Calling a taxi to take her to the airport. 

Keeps the gloves on for every handshake, every interaction.

Safer that way. Distance, she’s decided, is the easiest path to walk alone.

______________

London, it turns out, is not as different from home as she worried it would be on the long plane ride over. The currency takes some getting used to and it’s certainly strange to see people driving on the other side of the road, but she likes it.

It’s nice. Anonymous.

The hostel she stays in is nice enough, but clearly not meant for long-time residence. Her roommates come and go, most of them kind enough. Some of them quiet. There are others, still, that want to know everything about her—why she’s there, how she’s liking it, what her plan is.

It gets slower once the colder months are over, and Dani spends a few weeks alone, job hunting and spending her time in pubs. She’s done the “sight-seeing thing” at least three times already, so she starts staying in her room more and more. 

There’s one ad in particular in the classifieds of one of the papers she reads that crops up at the start of every month. A live-in nanny gig for two children at a house in the countryside. It intrigues her—sets something sparking under her skin—but she stays away from it. Worries. 

At the beginning of her sixth month there, a woman around her age moves into one of the other beds in her room. It’s strange at first, because Dani has never seen anyone but college grads seeing the world on a budget be in such high spirits in a hostel. But this woman—Ivy—is the exception.

She has pretty, blue eyes and a nice accent—sort of like the ones Dani’s always heard in movies—and clothes like she comes from money. But she’s also the first person who doesn’t give Dani a strange look for the gloves. On her first night, she practically drags Dani to the nearest pub for dinner, and spends the whole time talking about a wildlife special she saw on the BBC about sea otters.

Dani laughs a lot. It’s the first time in as long as she can remember doing so.

______________

They’re not quite friends. No, Dani’s walls are too far into their construction for that and Ivy doesn’t seem like she’s planning to stick around for long enough that it might matter. Still, it is nice to have someone her age around. Someone to say good morning to, to catch a meal with. 

Occasionally, she’s using the phone in the hallway when Dani comes back at the end of the day. Her voice is always pitched low and intimate, smiling like spring morning. Dani tries not to eavesdrop, but she does catch snippets by accident. 

Things like: _soon_ and _oh, Nora_ and _I love you, too._

That’s when Dani finally understands that Ivy’s perpetually rosy pink lips aren’t makeup after all. 

And it isn’t like it’s any of her business, but there’s a photograph that Ivy keeps by the side of her bed of her and another woman—shorter than her, strawberry blonde hair, her lips rosy pink as well, both of them smiling in a beautiful garden. She’s got her eyes on the camera, but Ivy’s eyes are on her and Dani immediately understands what she’s looking at.

“Our parents weren’t too happy when they found out,” Ivy says, by way of explanation, when she comes back into the room to see Dani looking the photo over. “She’s in America right now. That’s where I’m headed, actually. Just thought it best to stay here rather than home while I got my visa sorted out.”

“Oh,” says Dani, setting the picture back down and making a hasty retreat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

Ivy waves her off, unbothered. “It’s alright. Whoever passes up the opportunity to talk about their soulmate?”

She says it so easily, so offhand, and it isn’t as if Dani is ignorant to same-sex soulmates—isn’t even like Ivy is the first person she’s known with one—but Ivy is the first to say it so boldly, so without shame. Just proud and eager and undeniably in love.

“Oh,” says Dani. “What’s she like?”

Ivy smiles. “Wonderful. Smart and funny and a little reserved. Kind of like you,” she says, giving Dani a fond look.

For reasons Dani has been suppressing for as long as she can remember, something in her thrills at the attention.

“What about yours?” Ivy asks, gesturing to Dani’s gloved hands, pressed between her knees as she sits on the edge of her bed.

“Oh,” says Dani. Then: “I don’t...I don’t have one.”

Ivy gives her a kind smile. “I’m sure whoever she is, she’s worth the wait.”

______________

It isn’t until the day after Ivy leaves that Dani lets herself consider what she’d said.

 _She_.

And…

Oh. 

Dani hadn’t let herself consider that before.

______________

That ad for the live-in position shows up in the following day’s paper. Dani sits in a cafe and reads it through five times, curiosity pinging her thoughts from one end of her mind to the other. 

Like a puzzle missing a few pieces. A half-formed question with an answer in invisible ink. Right on the tip of her tongue.

She pictures them—these children. Young, brilliant, and lonely. Dwarfed by the extravagant home around them. Quiet. There’s something missing, isn’t there? Something that’s gone from inside Dani, too.

And then it hits her.

______________

A pretty, young woman named Rebecca welcomes her into Henry Wingrave’s office. Dressed sharp. Talks sharper. Offers a hand for Dani to shake and only hesitates a moment when her hand meets the warmth of Dani’s glove.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Clayton,” she says.

Dani smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

______________

Bly Manor is a place painted over with a thousand fables in the making. The house looms above the tops of the trees like shrine to something long since dead and gone. The sun blooms over the rooftop, spreading warmth across the green grass and the hedges—the flowers growing into each other, winding and braiding and becoming something else. Something better.

It’s huge. A fairytale. Dani has to blink a few times to be sure she’s not imagining it.

There are two pale and smiling children waiting for her and Owen at the end of the drive. The girl rushes over to tug Dani from the car, gushing about how pretty she is and how _splendid_ it is that she’s there. The boy manages to break into the rambling in order to express his own excitement. Give his own name.

The housekeeper introduces herself next, her eyes flitting to Owen every other second in a way that almost makes Dani feel like she’s intruding. It isn’t until she’s pulling her hand out of their handshake that she sees the faint lilac coloration of Hannah’s left palm, the same shade as Owen’s right one. 

When Flora tugs her towards the house, Hannah lingers and Dani can hear her greeting Owen softly, privately. It’s strange—they’re standing so near, but Dani can’t understand what they’re saying. As if they’ve slipped into some private, intimate language that only they understand. 

It reminds her of Eddie’s parents, how quietly they spoke to one another—if not in words, then in glances, in a trailing touch to the arm or the shoulder. Of Ivy’s soft phone conversations at the hostel. There’s a tight knot of something in Dani’s chest that she thinks might be yearning, but she can’t be sure. 

_How lovely it must be_ , she thinks, not for the first time, _to have met the one person in all the world that is meant for you._

How peacefully Hannah and Owen must sleep at night.

Dani cannot possibly imagine.

“Come on,” Flora says, pulling on Dani’s hand so adamantly that the fabric of her gloves begin to slip. “You just have to see the sitting room. It’s so perfectly—”

“—splendid,” Miles finishes, matching his sister’s pace. He gives Dani a cheeky grin, hands in his pockets and cheeks flushed pink from the rush of the afternoon.

Dani smiles. 

It’s strange, but the carved-out hollow of her chest fills itself, just the barest amount. There is still so much negative space to fill, but it’s a start. The first she’s had in a long, long while.

Something about the children... _fits_. 

Maybe that can be enough for now.

______________

Dinner is a nice enough affair. Owen cooks and Dani ruins the tea while Hannah serves the children their food and sits down at the head of the table, a smile on her face that doesn’t falter even the slightest bit when she meets Dani’s eyes.

“So, what did Miss Clayton think of the house, loves?” Hannah asks between bites.

Dani opens her mouth to speak, but Flora beats her to it.

“That it’s perfectly splendid,” she chirps, throwing a gap-toothed smile Dani’s way.

“I feel like I might need a map,” Dani admits. “This house is going to take some getting used to.”

“I’d be happy to donate some breadcrumbs to the occasion, should you need to make yourself a trail,” Owen tells her. “It might make you feel a little _butter_.”

Dani blinks, still for a moment, and then understands the joke.

“Oh, hush,” Hannah says and Owen winks in return. 

“Someone’s in a crumby mood,” he says and Flora giggles.

It’s something to watch, the way the two of them look at one another. The way they speak and interact—that easy balance each brings to the other. No hesitation, no questioning. Something else—something tethered and strong and hard to watch with the ragged edge of each heartbeat in Dani’s chest.

Dani looks away. She picks up her tea and the porcelain slips through her cotton-covered fingers. 

She catches it before it breaks, but not before it spills.

______________

“Are you cold?” 

Dani rests her elbow on the edge of the bathtub and fixes Flora with a curious look. “Am I cold?”

Flora nods, a crown of bubbles toppling off the top of her head and landing with the soapy cloud around her small body. “Yes,” she says. “Sometimes, when my hands are cold, I wear gloves, too.”

Oh. Yes.

Dani clears her throat, pulls herself upright and hides her hands on her lap. “Um, actually, I’m—” She cuts herself off. Pushes the words around in her head, trying to find a better order to say them in. “I just like to keep mine covered.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really like to touch other people with my hands. That’s all.”

“Why?”

Of course that wouldn’t be answer enough.

Dani sighs. “Well...sometimes when you touch someone else, you...things get complicated. And I want things to be simple.”

There. That’s it. 

Flora hums a song under her breath, thoughtfully forming a bubble beard on her little chin. “My mummy said sometimes soul marks don’t mean you have to be with someone,” she says, voice a little sorrowful. “Daddy had his before they got married and she loved him very much anyway. That’s what she told me.”

Dani bites her lip. Wonders what she’s supposed to say to that. “Sounds like your mom was really smart,” she says. 

“Who gave you yours?” Flora asks. “What’s he like?”

It’s as if something inside of her _splinters._ Dani sucks in a harsh breath and counts to five before answering.

Thinking of her conversation with Ivy, she echoes her last answer, “I don’t have one.”

_A soul mark or a soulmate?_

Dani’s not sure which she means.

“Oh.” Flora tilts her head back as Dani fills a cup with bathwater, using it to rinse out her hair. The cotton of her gloves gets a little wet, a little water-logged, making her fingers feel just a little bit heavier. 

She slips her left one off a moment later so that she can pull the drain plug and then dries her hand off, slips it back on.

“Well,” Flora says as Dani wraps her in the warmth of a white towel, “I’m sure he’s going to be perfectly—”

______________

In the quiet of her bedroom, Dani lays in her bed and holds her bare hands up to the moonlight. The wind rattles against the window, the walls creaking and groaning. Her right hand is freckled—a dot here and there, skin practically luminescent in the darkness. Her palm is creased, skin folded by lines just like everyone else’s. The three in the middle scoop back and forth across the skin, forming an _M_ shape if the first inward diagonal was missing.

Eddie’s _M_ had been a _V_ instead, lines deeper than her own and calluses on the backside of his knuckles. His skin was always soft and dry, smooth when he gathered her hand in one of his own.

She looks to the left one and finds the same pattern, there. Lines faint in the darkness, like they were drawn with a pencil and then rubbed out by time. The curtains cause the moonlight to end severely just above her waist. She holds her left hand at the edge of it until her palm is dark, blackened out like Eddie’s arm had been.

She’d tried, hadn’t she?

Put her hand to almost every part of his body over the years, like trying to strike a match in the pouring rain. But her hand always came away the way it’s always been. 

She read somewhere once—when she was sixteen and _tired_ of feeling nothing in a kiss but Eddie’s chapped lips and wet tongue—that black was a bad omen in soul marks.

It meant mystery and fear and luck turned sour.

 _Death_.

Dani slips her hands beneath the covers and closes her eyes.

Thinks of Hannah and Owen and their eyes lit up as they looked at one another over dinner. Wonders what kind of omen lilac is. What pink means.

______________

The next day, out in the garden, Miles’s spider walks from Dani’s gloved hand and back into the grass while Flora shrieks about it twenty feet away and Miles laughs, still looking a little awed at Dani’s tenacity. 

Above them, the clouds are swollen with late morning rain. The smell of it hangs in the damp air, clinging to the scent of flowers and grass. It’s a beautiful day.

“Better luck next time,” Dani says, giving Miles a smile.

He grins, his brow already furrowed as he becomes lost in the beginnings of a plan. “I suppose so,” he says and off he goes, hands in his pockets, back to the manor the way they came.

Flora waits for Dani at the top of the hill and grabs for Dani’s hands once she’s close enough. She talks as they walk, babbling about this and that—almost no participation from Dani necessary, save for a nod here, an, _Oh, yeah?_ there. Easy enough.

Miles throws fond looks their way as they go, too charmed by himself to hang back, but enjoying the morning all the same.

It would be strange, how quickly they’ve taken her into their lives, if Dani knew nothing of what they’ve gone through still so recently. Children are more capable of grief than some, but they also crave forward motion. They long to rebuild and fix and _become_ again and Dani is no stranger to that feeling.

The way they laugh and reach for her is almost enough to have her gluing rubble together to make something resembling _faith_.

Here she is.

She has to take a moment to breathe at the edge of the lake, and the children stop to throw pebbles into the water. In school, she learned about the Titan, Cronus, who learned that one of his children was destined to overthrow him, so he swallowed all of them up before they could. But Zeus was hidden by his mother and he grew up angry and vengeful and killed his father anyway. And Dani used to wonder _well what good is choice anyway if Fate is going to find us no matter what we do_. 

But she thinks she’s starting to understand now. Because Fate can only decide where you’re going, but there is freedom in how you get there.

You choose for yourself the kind of ending you deserve, even as that red string tugs you further and further along. 

Eddie always talked about them in terms of destiny. _We’re supposed to be together, Danielle_ , he said at the end. _That’s how it works_.

It was their last argument and she could not make him see her position— _why don’t you understand that I want a say in the matter_ —that she couldn’t compromise— _you’re my everything, my_ **_soulmate_ ** **,** _how do you not know that we’re meant to be_ —with what she knew in her heart was wrong.

And at the end of it all, they stared each other down with their teeth bared, one of them unable to listen, the other unable to be heard.

But Eddie died. And here she is. She’s not sure how to mourn him exactly. She’s not sure she ever has.

_You’re running away from it, Danielle. You think this is something that will go away with time._

The last thing her mother said to her on the phone echoes in her mind. Makes Dani shiver. Makes her joints ache at the memory. But Dani is not running—she’s _staying_ ; she’s choosing to bloom where she’s planted.

Here. With with these children, these people. At the edge of a lake, under the iron grey sky, the wet grass leaving green residue on the sides of her sneakers with every lift and fall of her feet.

______________

That afternoon, having lunch in the kitchen, everything changes course. It’s normal enough at first—Hannah and the kids set up at the table, Dani sitting across from them and Owen at the oven, finishing up the food. But then someone— _the gardener,_ Dani thinks—walks in and the breath is stolen right from Dani’s lungs. 

_Jamie_.

That was the name Owen mentioned in the car—the one Hannah said offhandedly in a side comment the night before. Dani hasn’t had time enough to try and conjure an image of what she might look like, but now she doesn’t need to.

Jamie is a slight woman, wiry muscles that flex and move beneath the pale skin of her arms; her mouth drawn taut, like a bow, winding up a smile and then letting it go with the zest and vigor of an exploding star as she teases Miles and Flora. The delicate contour of her neck glistens with sweat, her brown hair curly and mussed, like she happened upon its handsome style by accident. It looks soft enough for Dani to curl her fingers into and—

“Are you alright dear?” Hannah asks, voice drawn in a whisper. 

Dani blinks. Looks at her. “Yes. Y-yeah.” She swallows thickly and bobs her head up and down to make her answer seem more convincing. “I’m fine.”

Jamie spares them a glance, her eyes lingering on Dani just long enough to feel like forever. Briefly, Dani wonders if she’s supposed to say something—if she’s supposed to form some kind of introduction or shake a hand. But Jamie seems to be under the impression that they’ve already met, or else she doesn’t care for the formality of it all.

There’s something like relief ballooning in Dani’s veins when she realizes this. Jamie has a quality in her eyes, in her smile, in her _energy_ that makes the thought of touching her dangerous.

Dani pushes this thought away for another time.

“Hungry, then?” Owen asks, just seconds after setting a plate down in front of Jamie. 

Jamie looks up at him, mouth half-full, and swallows. “Work up an appetite doing physical labor,” she says. “Not that you’ve much experience with that, yeah?”

“Not sure that’s a conversation to be had around the _wee_ ones,” Owen returns, grinning. 

“That so?” Jamie’s eyes flicker between Owen and Hannah, before settling back where they started. “God bless her.”

Hannah exhales and shakes her head. “The pair of you, I swear.”

Jamie snorts out a laugh. Owen chuckles and takes a seat at the other end of the table. 

“I only call ’em like I see ’em, Han,” Jamie says and sends Hannah a wink. Hannah mutters something under her breath good-naturedly and turns her attention back to the children. 

Their conversation falls into the easy cadence of familiar affection, neat and efficient. Dani lets the sound of it fill her mind. The heat of Jamie’s gaze washes over her skin every few seconds for the rest of the meal.

Dani keeps her eyes down. Hands to herself. Minds her own business and doesn’t dare let herself think that maybe—

______________

That night, Dani sleeps poorly. Not because she cannot fall asleep, but because Jamie’s face will not leave her mind. The shape of her eyebrows and the bow of her lips. Her white teeth and her broad smile, those shimmering green eyes.

There’s a tugging—insistent and fervent—at the center of her breast bone when she wakes up. It aches like a deep bruise, pinching and pulling when she turns a certain way. 

Here’s the trouble: she knows where it’s trying to take her.

It lessens by the kitchen door and worsens in the classroom during the children’s lessons. It pulls her to the window overlooking the garden as Miles works on long division and Flora works on cursive. Out in the damp below is Jamie’s figure, flitting across the grounds with a ladder or a shovel or something else that Dani’s eyes can’t quite understand.

She’s too far to see the curve of Jamie’s jawline, but her imagination has no trouble conjuring the image for her. Dani bites her lip and curls her gloved fingers together, twisting and gripping as she fights the pull to the edge—to the stairs, to the door, to the gardens, to this _woman_ who should feel like a stranger but feels like some kind of abstract mooring that Dani’s been living her entire life, thus far, without.

______________

“How are you getting on, then?” Jamie asks one day.

They’re in the garden, the children hard at work pulling weeds per Dani’s instructions. Hannah is sitting on Jamie’s other side, lost in thought it would seem, and there is something about the way Jamie looks at her that makes Dani feel like they’re the only two people who have ever existed on this earth.

This is not the first time they’ve spoken—a word or two at meals, in the halls, a _good morning_ or _goodbye_ —but it may as well be for the way Dani’s endearment flares at the sudden consideration.

“Oh,” Dani says, as if the question is one to ponder. “Um...good. Yeah, the kids are great, so...And everyone’s been so nice.”

“Good.” Jamie bobs her head. “Y’know, these two are practically in love with ya’ already.” She gestures vaguely at Miles and Flora who are flicking dirt at one another playfully. “They were real sore when Rebecca took that apprenticeship with Henry, but...you’re good with ’em.”

Dani remembers Rebecca’s fond smile as she spoke about Miles and Flora during her interview. That lost gaze—pained still, perhaps, from all that Peter Quint business—as she spared no detail in their personalities, their quirks, their excitability. Dani had accepted the job without a moment’s hesitation just based on Rebecca’s insight alone, already half-in-love with her not-yet wards.

There’s a chance she’s reading too much into this interaction, but the fact is, she can’t recall anyone ever looking at her the way Jamie does—so considering, so warm. And they are strangers still, but it’s as if there is nothing hanging in the air between them, no unnecessary weight or expectations, and there has never been another person she’s experienced that with.

“They’re good with _me_ ,” Dani says. “That’s not true for a lot of people.”

A flash of something in Jamie’s eyes. They drop down to Dani’s hands, the black gloves hiding her skin from view. 

“Can’t say I don’t know what that’s like,” Jamie says.

For a moment, Dani is too enthralled by the color of her eyes to respond, or even to fathom the depth of this moment. 

They don’t know each other. Not really. Three days and a few spare moments does not a friendship—or _relationship_ —make.

Dani knows this. She _knows_ this. But a match strikes hot in her chest at the implication of Jamie’s words all the same.

She’s just about to speak, to break the spell when something slams into her knees. 

It’s Flora, breathless and wind-swept, grinning from ear-to-ear. Her hands are dirty, some mud on her knees, but she looks happier than she has since Dani first arrived.

“Miles said I was too slow to finish before him but I _did_ ,” she says. “Isn’t that just perfect?”

“I let you win,” Miles says from behind her, looking just a little put-out.

Flora spins around. “No, you didn’t. I’m just so much faster than you are and—”

Her words spin off towards her brother, colorful and spindly and reaching, their banter is so uncomplicated and so domestic that Dani aches with the loss of a sibling she’d never been given.

Beside her, Jamie gets to her feet, rubbing her hands together like she’s trying to relieve some of the unspoken tension still lingering between them. “I should—” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder in the vague direction of the greenhouse rather than finishing. “See you around, then, Poppins.” She gives Hannah a nod and starts away.

Dani watches her go, watches her disappear around the corner, Flora’s hand wrapped around her finger as she laughs at something Miles has just said.

______________

Dani knows better. She should. She _does._

So: she keeps her distance. Spends time with the children. Takes long walks around the grounds during breakfast. Goes to bed early. Gets up late.

The point of all of this is that it’s supposed to help fizzle out whatever might have the audacity to begin brewing. That’s what everyone told her after Eddie’s funeral.

They said: “You need time. That’s all. You just need _time_.”

And maybe that’s true for Eddie. Maybe there will be a morning when she will wake and she will not feel the bitter taste of regret at the back of her throat, will not imagine the twitch of his bloody hands or the gurgle of each painful breath in those last moments. Maybe one day she’ll stop imagining him in the doorway of her bedroom, stop imagining his hand on her shoulder or waist when she is standing still. 

But time has also brought something else—the idea of someone who might be able to make things more bearable. Who could make each breath a little less _sharp_.

The trouble is: time has done nothing but make her ache _more_ , long _more_ , for what she’s never quite had.

Worse: assuming that time can fix whatever this is with Jamie is to assume that the yawning _thirst_ for her is finite.

And Dani is starting to believe it may be endless.

______________

One night, a week or so in, Dani drifts through the halls like a ghost, imagining Eddie around every corner. _Jamie_ around every corner. She’s heading to the kitchen so that she can do something with her hands besides imagining them catching Jamie’s wrist, bare and uncovered and her skin turning... _something_. 

Some color that isn’t black.

She’s nearly there when a figure comes around the corner from the dining room. Not going to the same place. No intention of meeting each other like this. Just chance and Dani stopping in her house slippers on the hardwood floor before they run into one another.

It’s Jamie. Wearing the same clothes she’d been in when Dani had seen her last, in the yard after dinner. Slouched spine, pale forearms poking out from the bunched sleeves of her over shirt, hair a little messy from the length of the day. She is beautiful.

And Dani in her pajamas and house slippers, her robe hanging open and fluttering as she waits for whatever is coming next. She’d only been going to make some tea—or try to anyway.

“Oh,” says Dani, numbed solid under the gaze of this woman who means more than she should already.

“Fancy meetin’ you like this,” Jamie says. Her eyes dance in amusement and she takes a step forward, closer, mouth set in the easy smile of a woman offering up something that Dani isn’t sure she can take. 

“What are you—” Dani starts, but thinks better of it. Readjusts. Says, “I mean...it’s late and you’re not usually—”

Jamie nods. Cuts her off with it. “Right, yeah,” she says. “I’m not. Just...wanted to give Owen and Hannah some time together and cleaned up dinner. That’s all.”

“Oh,” says Dani. “Okay.”

The wall between them—the one that Dani has been trying to build since she first laid eyes on the other woman—rips open and Jamie pours through. There are rules for a reason, and Dani has just forgotten the reason.

Jamie is so close and Dani’s hands quiver. Her breath stutters, and she tries to force herself to calm down, because being alone with her like this is difficult for so many reasons and she can’t name any of them in the moment. She should put an end to this, shouldn’t she?

But then:

What is there _to_ end?

“Sorry, did you need to get through?” Jamie steps to the side of the doorway to give Dani enough room to pass. 

“Oh. Um...yes. Thank you.”

Jamie laughs, a lovely sound. Dani’s breath halts for a second, and then resumes. “You keep saying that,” she says. “You okay, Poppins?”

Dani blinks. “Keep saying what?”

Another laugh. “Oh,” Jamie says, her voice pitched to mimic Dani’s. 

“Oh,” Dani says, but: “Oh, no. I mean...Sorry.”

“No need.” She steps around Dani all the way and starts towards the front door, moving slowly, hands in her pockets. “Goodnight.”

What Dani wants to say is this: _please don’t go, I think you’re important, I think you might be_ **_it_ ** _and Ivy was right, you were worth the wait and I don’t know what that means or if that sounds crazy, but please just stay because I really—_

She doesn’t say that. Of course she doesn’t.

No. She says, “Wait, um...Jamie?” and spins around to find that Jamie has halted, that she’s looking back at her curiously, interested. Maybe a little longing, but Dani can’t be sure. “I was just about to make some tea. Would you want to...” 

She trails off, unsure as to how to finish the thought without sounding completely pathetic.

Jamie clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You makin’ it?” she asks and, when Dani nods, she whistles through her teeth. “Alright. But only s’long as we say a prayer first.”

Dani blushes, a giggle slipping through her lips and Jamie looks delighted at the sound. She turns and heads back to the kitchen, smiling a little at the sound of footsteps close behind.

She supposes she was bound to break eventually.

Tonight is as good a night as any.

______________

Jamie—unsurprisingly—is unlike most people Dani has met. Possibly, she is the only person Dani knows that says exactly what she means. There is pull between them as they sit at the kitchen table talking that Dani cannot even begin to comprehend. The air seems to crackle around Jamie as she speaks and she smiles like she truly believes Dani is good company.

“It’s good to have someone like you ’round here,” Jamie tells her, having abandoned Dani’s poor attempt at tea in favor of a bottle of wine shared between them both. “No bullshit. The kids aren’t used to that. I don’t think any of us is. You’re a good influence, Poppins. We’re damned lucky to have you.”

She isn’t quite sure what to make of Jamie: this woman she truly does not know. She is brazen. Bold. Enchanting. And not at all like anything Dani might have expected. 

What frightens her is this: if Jamie is not who she’s meant for, Dani thinks she would rather spend the rest of her days alone.

______________

The next morning. Early.

Dani brings coffee to the greenhouse first thing in the morning and Jamie welcomes her with a grin.

Says, “You Americans and your coffee.”

Takes a drink. Subtly spits it back out in an attempt to spare Dani’s feelings, but Dani knows.

“That’s okay,” Dani tells her. “Can’t be good at everything, I guess.”

Jamie laughs. “Girl like you was bound to have _some_ kind of flaw.”

Dani blushes. Looks away.

That’s the thing about Jamie: when she looks at Dani, she does not see a widow. She doesn’t see someone to pity or feel sorry for. 

She sees who Dani is without the burden of Eddie’s arm around her shoulders. She sees Dani, young and unfettered and just the slightest bit apprehensive about the idea of belonging to someone else.

______________

That night, Flora and Miles insist on something they call “Story Time.” Hannah seems resigned, Owen delighted, and Jamie exasperated. Dani isn’t sure what to expect.

But it’s darling enough. Dear enough. There is already something innately performative in both children that the whole thing plays directly to their strengths and interests. 

It’s a good night. Dani laughs and Owen slips an arm around Hannah’s shoulder, pulling her nearer, and Jamie throws Dani a look every so often—rolls her eyes or grins cheekily; a wink or two here and there.

And then the phone rings.

______________

A conversation between a governess and a gardener after Owen’s car disappears around the bend in the drive:

“I’m so sorry,” says Dani,” about Owen’s mom. Sorry that—”

“That’s alright,” says Jamie.

“It’s...It isn’t. It’s so terrible to lose someone.”

“Yeah.” A step closer. “It is. But Owen’s got Hannah and...and us. He’s not alone.”

“No. I guess he isn’t.”

A breath. They reach Jamie’s car and look at one another.

“You’re not either, Poppins. I hope you know that.”

Oh.

Another thing: Jamie never needs to guess what Dani is thinking. It’s as if she simply just... _knows._

“I do,” says Dani.

They look at each other, both hot with heartache, understanding each other for, perhaps, the first real time.

Dani reaches out and grabs Jamie’s hand, touching her—and if _that_ doesn’t send a frantic spark through her veins—for the first time. 

Sometime during the evening, she must have forgotten about her gloves. She’s almost surprised when she feels only the warmth of Jamie’s skin, rather than the skin itself.

When she looks down, no colors bloom across Jamie’s hand. Dani tells herself there isn’t any reason to be disappointed.

But: it changes _something_.

Jamie’s eyes light up in understanding and she squeezes Dani’s covered fingers with her own. The moment lasts a breath or two longer until Jamie has to pull away, leaving the cool air to leech back the warmth from Dani’s palm. 

“Who the hell knew?” she asks, opening the door of her truck and getting in.

But Dani knew, didn’t she? Hadn’t she known all along?

And here’s the thing about being alone: real love makes it impossible.

_______________


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m so sorry this took so long to post! midterms have been calling me ugly and stupid for the past week.
> 
> but this is extra long! i added more stuff. and happy ending ahoy.
> 
> enjoy, my dudes.

______________

The question to be asked: what happens now?

The funeral for Owen’s mother is held in town two days later. Dani tears through her belongings twice, trying to find something appropriate to wear. All she manages to find is an all-black evening gown that doesn’t necessarily strike an appropriate tone.

The answer:

“You decent?¹” Jamie calls through the door to Dani’s bedroom after a knock.

“Come in,” Dani says, heart throbbing in her chest as the door squeaks open and Jamie slides past it in an outfit that makes Dani’s breath catch. “Oh...You look…¹”

“I can scrub up when I need to,” Jamie tells her, shutting the door behind herself. “Funeral starts at four. Owen said we should get there early.¹”

Dani nods. “Okay.¹”

She can’t maintain eye contact for long, cannot stomach the thought of breaking apart this fragile blossoming between the two of them by admitting to the churning shame in her stomach at the thought of another funeral. Another closed casket. More muffled weeping bouncing around the heavy walls of the church. 

“It’s a…” Jamie begins, taking a seat on the footstool at the end of Dani’s bread and looks her over. “It’s quite a dress.¹”

“Yeah, it’s the only thing I had in black,” Dani admits. “I-I hate it.¹”

Jamie says something about scandalizing the village. Dani says something about letting Owen down.

But: “Honestly, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,¹” and oh—

Okay.

“I don’t _need_ you to be my date to Owen’s mom’s funeral,¹” says Jamie and it’s a relief that she does not ask for clarification when Dani offhandedly mentions Eddie’s funeral.

She asks Jamie to help her unzip her dress, laughs when Jamie makes a joke out of it, and it _is_ a little strange, yes, to ask this woman she doesn’t know very well—that she is astonishingly attracted to—to help her with this. There is a strange intimacy to having another person assist you with adjusting your clothing. Briefly, she remembers the female tailor Eddie’s mom hired to refit her wedding dress—the delicate splay of her fingers at Dani’s waist.

And this is similar, but it’s also different.

This isn’t just anyone. This is _Jamie_ . Jamie, who is the strongest pull on Dani’s ability to control herself that she’s ever known. Jamie, who she’s spent the last two days—the last _week_ , if she’s being honest with herself—imagining touching her just like this. Pulling a sweater or a shirt over Dani’s head, pushing her onto her bed with careful hands, the mark of her touch shining and shimmering on Dani’s skin and the press of Jamie’s lips to that spot. 

Does being touched by your soulmate feel any different than being touched by anyone else?

Dani doesn’t know. But her chest aches with the urge to spin around, pull Jamie into a kiss and _find out_.

Except—

She’s not brave enough for that, is she? Not quite, or else—not yet.

She doesn’t get the chance anyway.

One moment, Jamie is dutifully pulling at the zipper at the back of Dani’s dress and then she is stepping back and away, leaving Dani’s newly-exposed skin cool by the sudden movement.

When Dani turns, Jamie is frowning, a serious look in her eye that Dani doesn’t think she’s seen in them yet.

“Are you okay?” Dani asks, dreading the answer.

Jamie stands statuesque, captured in stone and marble. All shape, no color. A pause, her paths. Her eyes roam over Dani’s face like she’s seeing her for the first time. A breath and then:

“Yeah. Yeah, ’course I am.”

Perhaps this was too quick. Are there different rules about interactions when you’re attracted to a woman? Dani has certainly had female friends who’ve helped her with difficult dresses or unruly zippers, but they were—

They were different than Jamie. _That_ was different with them than it is with Jamie, perhaps. Dani’s stomach flips over, making her feel just the slightest bit lightheaded. She feels like an idiot.

Clearly, there are rules in effect here that she isn’t privy to.

Before she can gather enough courage to ask where exactly she went wrong, Jamie blinks as if coming back to herself and says, “I should get going.”

“Oh,” Dani breathes. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll...catch ya’ later, yeah?”

Dani doesn’t even have a chance to respond before Jamie is clearing her throat and going over to the door, opening it and slipping out, going away.

Dani stands there, clutching her dress up to keep it from falling around her ankles, and listens to the sound of Jamie’s footsteps as they retreat down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door.

When her truck rumbles to life a few moments later and sets off, getting further and further away, Dani is still standing where Jamie left her, trying to figure out how much she’s just messed up and whether or not she can fix it.

______________

The air is warm until the sun begins to set and then everything freezes over. Dani throws together dinner with her bare hands—something her mom used to make—with the children and tries very hard not to hate herself—hate that look she’d put in Jamie’s eyes before she left. 

They’re not alone for very long. The back door opens and Jamie comes in slowly, like she’s hoping she could maybe go unnoticed. Their eyes meet and Dani’s fingers ache as she comes over to sit by the island—some phantom burn from holding onto something instead of just letting go.

Jamie keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket and talks to Dani through the children. Asks how their day was, what they did. How they’re feeling. Keeps it light. 

Dani wants to say that she’s sorry for whatever it is she’s done wrong. She wants to say a lot of things that she’s been biting back since they met—that have been resting sharp in her chest. But she doesn’t. Can’t. Doesn’t matter.

Hannah and Owen arrive, somber and slow, and Jamie looks so relieved at their divine intervention that it makes Dani ache all the more. Hannah takes over the cooking while Dani wraps her arms around Owen in greeting. 

When she draws back, his hands catch her own and Dani realizes a moment too late that she isn’t wearing her gloves. But it doesn’t matter. It’s Owen. His lilac-tinged hand squeezes her pale one and then he draws away.

She sits side-by-side with Jamie while they eat and not once do their arms or hands brush. Dani realizes quite suddenly that she’s not the only one trying to keep her distance now.

When she’s certain she can get away with it, she glances over at Jamie, taking in her elegant profile, the dipping shadows over her expression. She has a habit of gripping her wine glass between bites, even if she doesn’t drink from it, and Dani is just allowing herself to admire the delicate curl of the other woman’s fingers when she sees it.

Her next breath is hard, like something has set her lungs on fire—filled with smoke and making her cough and choke a little. Making her suck in a deep breath after like she’s drowning, like she’s being burned alive, and it feels that way, doesn’t it? It feels like she might be.

“Are you alright, dear?” Hannah asks, leaning forward in concern.

Dani nods, sucking in another breath—a little deeper this time. Owen gets up out of his chair and rushes to the sink, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. He brings it back over and stands beside her chair while she takes it and drinks, slowly. Agonizingly. The taste of ash at the back of her throat.

“You had me worried there, Miss Clayton,” Owen says softly, patting her on the shoulder as she gives him a tired thumbs-up to show that she’s fine. “I’m not even _choking_ about that.”

Hannah gives him a look. Miles smiles a little. Flora still looks a little too upset about Dani’s distress to care much for another pun. 

As for Jamie—

She looks concerned. Eyeing Dani carefully, like she wants to reach out and touch her but can’t for some reason. Or won’t allow herself to.

 _Better that way_ , Dani thinks. She doesn’t need another reminder of what she can’t have.

“Are you okay now?” Flora asks, her little voice peaked with worry.

Dani smiles at her. Gives her a gravelly, “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry to scare everyone. Just—” She trails off, gathering up an excuse. “Went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.”

There’s another few moments of worry, where everyone is quiet, as if they’re trying to make sure that Dani isn’t about to start choking again. But, eventually, they all go back to their food—the kids chattering at one another while Hannah and Owen talk in hushed voices, her left hand never leaving his right, their fingers tangled together on the tabletop.

Dani lifts her wine glass to her lips, glad for the static it’s created in her veins, in her limbs. Glad for the fog in her head, making her thoughts ( _stupid, stupid, stupid, as if Jamie could ever—as if_ **_you_ ** _could ever—_ **_stupid_ **) harder to understand.

Making the heavy look in Jamie’s eyes a little less distant.

Dani tells herself not to look—that it wasn’t something she imagined. It wasn’t paint or a trick of the light or anything but this:

A soulmark. Spattered across Jamie’s hands. The fingertips of her left hand. Knuckle to fingernail on her right index finger. 

Dani does not say: _Who are they?_

She does not say: _Do they deserve you?_

And she does not say: _How much of their skin turned blue when you touched them?_

She does not say anything at all.

There is nothing to say.

______________

And Dani feels foolish. Feels so, so, _so_ silly for ever allowing herself to _think_ it. For missing it before, somehow. Not seeing it. To even entertain the idea.

To lie in her bed at night and imagine touching Jamie’s skin with her own. Running her fingertips down Jamie’s arms or stomach or legs, painting a trail red or green or silver. Kissing her and pulling back to find Jamie’s lips flushed a bright color that matches the new one on her own.

Telling her about a girl who grew up thinking she was _broken_ , that no one could ever—

But, no.

There’s no use in hoping for impossible things.

______________

The kids in bed, the orange glow of the fire popping light into the shadows lining their faces, and Jamie gives Dani a toast—says she’s thankful for Dani to be there.

“What about you, Poppins?¹” she says once she’s finished and Dani is far too surprised to respond, or even fathom what it is that Jamie’s just said. She can’t remember if anyone has ever spoken about her like that before and it aches. 

Part of her wants to ask Jamie _why_ . Because Jamie has a soulmate somewhere, someone else to fix those beautiful, green eyes on. Someone to go home to and kiss and love and _be_ with, so why does she need to torture Dani any further?

What good will that do?

Instead, she just says, “No, thank you,¹” and listens as Owen cuts in, talking about his mother.

______________

“I thought you were a little batty when I met you, y’know.”

Dani looks up at Jamie, who is watching her intently in the semi-darkness of the greenhouse. The bench they’re on is small and she can feel the heat of Jamie’s leg against her own under the blanket they’re sharing for warmth. 

Dangerous territory, perhaps, but it seemed right to give Hannah and Owen some time on their own after—

Well, everything.

And her stupid, traitorous heart couldn’t bear the thought of calling it a night early—had thrilled at the romantic notion of a conversation alone in the cool dark, surrounded by greenery and moonlight and the breeze whispering through the doorway.

Now Jamie is trying to make conversation while they’re pressed together, shoulder to thigh, and Dani is trying to make herself breathe normally. Act like a person.

Someone who isn’t the slightest bit heartbroken.

“Oh, yeah?” she asks, hoping her tone strikes the right note for the current mood.

“The gloves, for one.”

Dani laughs. Fixes her eyes on the ground. “And for two?” she asks.

Jamie seems to think this over for a moment. “Well...you’re American. So there’s that.”

Another laugh. In a world where Jamie is less charming, another Dani is a little annoyed with her. Here, though—

“Yeah,” she sighs. “They’ve gotten me weird looks before.”

“At first, I thought maybe you were allergic to the sun. But then I figured that doesn’t make sense since the rest of you isn’t covered all the time.”

“You can be allergic to the sun?” Dani asks, but Jamie continues on without answering.

“And then I thought: maybe she’s one of those people who’s scared of germs. But then, I figure, you wouldn’t be too keen on spending all your time around kids.”

There’s a pause and then Jamie continues, saying, “But now I think they’re just a symptom of runnin’ away from something.”

The words strike an aching chord inside Dani’s chest. She thinks of her mother. Thinks of her saying almost that exact same thing, but with a note of bitter disappointment in her voice instead of what sounds like melancholy. 

“And what am I running away from?” Dani asks. Has to know.

Jamie shrugs. “Something that usually finds you anyway.”

Dani tilts her chin up to look at her so quickly that her head fills with white noise for a moment and she has to blink it away. Even if her voice sounds light, Jamie’s own eyes are downturned. Every single angle of her speaks of regret, of defeat.

“Are you running away too?” 

When Jamie looks up, Dani shifts her eyes to look at Jamie’s blue-colored fingers. This, for some reason, makes Jamie crack a smile for a brief moment before it falls away. “Oh, this?” she asks, wiggling her fingers and laughing a little at herself or the situation or both. “I’ll let ya’ know as soon as I find out.”

If Dani is meant to understand what she means by that, the opposite happens. Instead, Dani finds herself more confused than ever.

“What do you mean?” she asks next, soft and measured.

A beat or two. Silence.

“Well...suppose I’m afraid it won’t work out,” Jamie confesses. Their eyes meet briefly and she must see that this has done nothing to quell Dani’s curiosity because she shakes her head and says, “The whole...soulmate thing doesn’t always pan out right, does it? I guess I’m scared that might be what happens here.”

Dani shakes her head. “I think it...I think that...if it’s _mutual_ , then it usually works out.”

Testing the waters. Waiting for something she cannot name.

Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “Mutual?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it always?”

There is something alight, something dancing, inside Jamie’s eyes that Dani has never noticed before.

“Not...not always,” Dani tells her, her voice so quiet she can barely hear herself.

Jamie must know how hard it was for her to say that because she doesn’t respond. She just sits quietly, waiting to see if Dani’s brave enough to say more.

And maybe she wouldn’t be under normal circumstances. But here is this woman she’s been pining over for what feels like years but has actually been few enough days to count on two hands, and she’s lost her chance, really, so what’s the harm?

“I, uh…I left a mark on someone...once. But he didn’t…” Dani trails off and the tone shifts immediately. So quickly that it leaves both of them a little breathless as they look at one another. Dani cannot see herself, but she can guess at the way her expression has changed by the look of surprised panic in Jamie’s eyes. She pulls her gloves off, one at a time, and holds her hands up so that Jamie can see her unblemished skin. “I didn’t get one. And then he...he died and...”

Jamie blinks. Pushes her foot against the side of Dani’s beneath the blanket hanging off of them and dripping to the floor. “Oh...Poppins, I’m—I’m sorry.”

Dani shakes her head. “It’s...It’s okay. I—”

And she remembers—can taste the copper sting of blood in the air, feel the scrape of her skin against the pavement, the pained tremble in Eddie’s hands, the edge of his mark peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his sweater. 

This is: the few inches of space between the two of them, these women forged of ice and bone, the tattered edge of something that might have been breathing down their necks.

“Why wouldn’t it work out?” Dani asks next, needing to know, needing to keep the words coming.

Jamie pauses for a moment, thinking this over and then she says, “Turns out she’s lost someone,” and her eyes are wide with an emotion that Dani cannot name. “I don’t think I can ask her to risk losing someone else.”

 _She_.

The world tilts on its side.

“Why would she lose you?” says Dani. Her hands quiver. Her breath is stuttering, metallic and hard, and she forces herself to calm down, because if there could ever be a right moment for her to say it, she doesn’t think she’ll find it here.

“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “But I doubt she’d find me worth the risk.”

Gentle, cool fingers reach out and touch the skin of Dani’s wrist. Instead of pulling away, Dani turns her hand and catches Jamie’s fingers and she hasn’t been touched like this in so long. She’d nearly forgotten what it felt like.

From the look that crosses Jamie’s face as she stares down at their hands, sliding together, she must know the feeling.

“Then she doesn’t deserve you, Jamie,” Dani says softly. Does not say anything further.

There’s something light in her chest, something that feels as though it’s lifting and she knows that if she doesn’t get control of this moment, it might very well carry her away.

She’s waiting for something. For anything. 

But it doesn’t come.

She pulls her hand back and tries to resist looking at it—really she does—but then she can’t help it. But another stone in her lungs, weighing her down.

Jamie has a soul mark already and it isn’t possible for her to leave another on anyone else, but Dani had been foolish enough to wish anyway.

Her hand is just as pale and bare as it has always been.

“Oh,” she whispers. 

Jamie frowns, following her eyes, looking almost as disappointed as Dani feels by her unmarked skin. “What?” she asks, all the same.

Dani shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe—”

Jamie cuts her off with a kiss. It’s quick. Just the press of their lips together, but when Dani reaches out and cups the back of Jamie’s head, pulling her in and kissing her back, it changes course almost immediately. From innocent to starved in a matter of moments. 

They shouldn’t do this. Jamie has a soulmate and it isn’t Dani and this whole thing is so—

There’s a tug behind Dani’s navel, some deep-set longing for something that’s already been lost.

Jamie pulls away, rests their foreheads together and Dani closes her eyes. There are breaths, short and broken, puffing against Dani’s bruised lips, her nose, her chin. Before she can find words worthy of the moment, soft fingers trail across her jaw until Jamie’s hand comes to rest at the back of her neck, brushing through her blonde hair.

“’M’sorry,” Jamie whispers, and Dani can feel their lips brush as she speaks. “I know you—”

Dani opens her eyes and Jamie swipes a thumb beneath her eye, rubbing away a wayward tear. Dani breathes— _can’t_ breathe looking into those green eyes, into the very loss of herself, of whatever hope that’s been strangling itself inside her since dinner.

Hears herself say, “I’m the one who should be sorry,” on her next breath. Jamie presses her lips to the corner of Dani’s mouth, comforting. “You have a soulmate and I should just—”

At this, Jamie pulls back, her grip loosening. “I have a…” She frowns, reaching up to tuck some of Dani’s hair behind her ear. “Dani, do you want this?” 

And she does. Oh, she _does_ want this. More than anything in her life.

But Jamie’s fingertips are blue and Eddie is dead and Dani is just boring, old Dani. No soulmate. No soul mark. Just a woman crushed beneath the solid weight of an age-old expectation.

Jamie has someone else. Someone destined for her. And Dani can want her and kiss her and _wish_ , but Jamie isn’t hers to take. Isn’t hers to _love_. 

“I just want things to be simple,” she whispers.

Something flashes in Jamie’s eyes—some fervent _ache_ that Dani cannot quite fathom. She pulls away, untangles herself, and runs her palms over her face.

“Right,” she says. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry. S’my fault.”

But—

“No, wait,” Dani says, reaching out a hand, but Jamie already getting to her feet, gathering the blanket, starting towards the yard. “Jamie—”

“It’s good,” Jamie tells her, but she can’t meet Dani’s eyes as she says it. She takes a deep breath, chin trembling a little, like she’s trying not to cry. “In another life, maybe.”

She turns and leaves, disappearing into the yard, and everything shatters back into place. 

Dani sits there, hands shaking at the thought of letting this moment slip from their fingers, and so full of aching love that it should be splintering her apart.

Jamie has slipped away already by the time Dani makes it back out to the fire. Hannah and Owen are waiting for her, watching for her. They are looking at her in a way that makes her sick with guilt and they presumably know all her secrets anyway. There’s no need to make an excuse.

“I’m going to…” Dani says, swallowing thickly around everything else she wants to say and _can’t_. “It’s late.”

They accept it so easily.

She takes her bottle of wine with her and finishes it off in her bedroom before going back out to the fire and tossing Eddie’s cracked glasses in, watching them burn, thinking _maybe, just maybe—_ maybe it will be enough to free her.

She doesn’t sleep.

______________

The next day. Morning. Hannah making tea in the kitchen.

“How is Owen?” asks Dani, the taste of her heartbeat throbbing on the back of her tongue. “Is he—?”

“He has some things to sort out and Jamie thought it best to take some time off, too,” Hannah tells her. “I think we all just need a chance to settle.”

She has a point.

 _Jamie_ flashes in her mind. The heat of her lips and her fingers tightening in Dani’s hair. The look in her eyes when she pulled away. The shape of her in the doorway, retreating, getting further and further away.

There and gone.

______________

Later, Flora says, “Your gloves! Did you lose them? I can help you find them. I’m very good at finding things. Once, Miles lost his—” and Dani lets herself be led out to the garden for a walk.

Imagines standing in an empty shadow, the light just out of reach. A phantom touch to the back of her neck. Imagines a cliff, the edge of it, and falling falling falling.

Goes to bed early every night for three days. Doesn’t sleep well. Doesn’t know how. Lies in bed and tries to make sense of anything, everything, but can never quite manage it. 

She cannot stop feeling like the world is spinning too fast and she is simply stuck standing still.

______________

Jamie’s phone number is listed on the memo pad kept on the fridge. It’s written in a small, slanted scrawl that has to be her own and Dani picks up the pad and takes it with her. Cradles the phone between her ear and her shoulder. Takes a deep breath. Types the number.

Her heart jumps each time it rings. 

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

At the tail end of the fourth ring, Jamie answers.

There’s noise behind her—music, it sounds like—and Dani can just barely hear her, “Hullo?”

“Jamie?” Dani says. “Hey, it’s...it’s Dani.”

It’s late. Too late to be calling, maybe. The children are in bed and Hannah probably is, too. All the lights are out in the kitchen, but there’s still the glowing yellow of a lamp in the hallway breaking the shadows into shards. Jamie breathes on the other end—the sound goes right through her; so very _another life maybe_ —and Dani can feel the muscles in her arm trembling as she holds the phone up.

“Oh,” Jamie says, a surprised sound. Then, “Anything the matter?”

Dani wonders at the level of honesty her answer requires—with all the hollow of the hours apart—and _s’my fault,_ surrounded by only her lonesome and lost and the chill in the air, drifting through the house.

“No, I just—” She cuts herself off. Clears her throat. “I just wanted to...talk to you. See how you’re doing.”

She can hear footsteps and the rustling of fabric. Dani panics for a moment, wondering if she’s caught Jamie at a truly terrible moment—is her soulmate at her flat with her? She imagines some long-limbed woman spread out beneath Jamie’s sheets and feels so very _resigned_ —trapped and flightless.

The music gets quieter. Jamie must have gone to turn it down.

She says, “I’m alright. And you?”

Dani considers it as she stands there in the darkness, in the clothes of a starbent woman—her sweater hanging down around her, baggy and soft—and she cannot breathe so she thinks _tell me I’m not imagining it please oh please tell me I’m not the only one_ —and pretending that her body is not her own, that the one that it fits inside of is not somewhere else or _with_ someone else. That, between them, there is only the night sky.

“We’re okay here. I just...When are you...When are you coming back?”

Another pause.

“Right, uh...I dunno. Soon, yeah. Sometime. Why?”

Dani wonders. Thinks it over. Says, “We just...miss you here, that’s all.”

“Who’s we?” Jamie asks.

Oh.

“Well...Hannah and Flora and…” She swallows thickly. Doesn’t finish. 

Her lack of answer spreads out, becoming silence, becoming _tense_.

After a little while, Jamie says, “They can handle a couple more days, I think,” in a way that sounds like she’s trying very hard to sound calm, collected.

“Yeah,” Dani says. “Yeah, definitely.”

She pulls the phone closer to her ear, until it aches against her. Twists and leans back against the wall, looking down at her feet. At the world spinning beneath them.

“Look, I should probably go,” Jamie says and Dani nods in agreement.

“Yeah, I...I’m sure you have...someone waiting or—”

Jamie’s scoff cuts her off. “Right. Yeah.”

It all comes together, as it does, as it has—the wounds, the sense of nameless dread she felt upon the call being patched through, the sense that, whatever she says, it’s going to be entirely the wrong thing.

Just like that, everything she might have wanted to say instead withers away and dies at the corners of her lips.

“Bye, Dani,” Jamie says.

The line clicks dead.

“Goodnight,” Dani says too late.

Always too late.

______________

A storm brews on the flanks of Dani’s mind for the rest of the week, and it starts so small and slight that, at first, she cannot even name it.

But then there is thunder and lightning and the angry lash of rain against every thought, every moment she dissects, every word she hears in Jamie’s voice.

She finds the library one morning, tucked away on the first floor by the school room, and pokes around at the dusty titles for a few hours. Pulls out a book or two that seem relevant.

But most of what they say are things she already knows:

One soul mark—one soul _mate_ per person. No exceptions. If Jamie has one, then Dani is not it.

Hers is someone else, out there somewhere. Waiting for her to find them. But—

She tries not to think about that. Instead, she thinks of other things. Wonders what Jamie’s soulmate looks like. What she’s like. How they met and how they touched for the first time. How she could know that Jamie is the one for her and not throw her arms around her and never let her go.

Falling in love with someone you aren’t destined for will lead to nothing but heartache.

That’s what one of the books she finds tells her. It’s a story about a man and a woman who are _not_ soulmates, but love each other anyway, until it kills them both. 

And she knows that’s true—some part of her thinks it must be—except—

She struggles to put it into words.

If asked, she may say this: the worst part of loving someone you cannot have is knowing exactly what it is you’re missing.

______________

Hannah and Dani sit beside one another in the sitting room one evening, after the children have been put to bed. A fire has been made and Hannah has a prayer book open on her lap and keeps fiddling with her necklace. Dani has a book, too. Another tragic romance about people who are not meant for one another, with a worn spine and dusty pages.

She reads the same sentence over and over again, comprehending it less and less every time.

“I hope you don’t mind me prying,” Hannah says after some time, “but are you alright, dear? I know we haven’t known each other long, but you haven’t seemed like...yourself these past few days.”

Dani considers this. Feels the ever-present sting of her eyes; from crying, or exhaustion, or heartbreak or all three.

“I’m...Things are just...complicated right now,” she says.

“Might I do anything to help?”

Such an honest question. A wave of affection, so strong it nearly knocks her over, washes over her.

“Thank you,” she says. “I just...I don’t think there’s anything that _could_ help.”

Hannah presses her lips together. Flips a page in her book. Dani’s breath rattles in her chest.

After a moment, Hannah says, “I was married once,” rather abruptly, and then hastily tacks, “Before I met Owen,” at the end.

Dani stares at her. “You were?”

“I was. For quite some time, actually.”

“What—” Dani tries to clear her throat, but can’t quite manage it. Continues on anyway. “What happened? If you...I mean, if you’re comfortable talking about it.”

Hannah gives her a fond smile. “There were years when I wasn’t,” she says. “But it’s gotten so much better with time.”

That old adage.

“We were an odd pair, getting married without being soulmates. The whole thing nearly killed my dear mum.” She is silent for a moment, eyes lost in some distant memory. “But Sam and I were determined. And then—Well, that’s the thing about fate, isn’t it dear? It will come knocking whether you are waiting for it, hoping for it, tracking it down, or burying yourself as deeply as you can to hide from it.”

Dani swallows thickly, _focuses_. Something in Hannah’s voice has sent the floor beneath her feet shifting and changing; the humidity and heat of the fire, the flush at the nape of her neck, spreading up to her ears.

“Sam came home one day with what looked like red lipstick on his cheek and packed his bags,” Hannah continues, “and then, of course, Mrs. Wingrave was kind enough to open her home to me.”

And Dani, guarded as ever, prods for more. “How did you...How did you get through that?” 

She can’t imagine. 

Jamie has never been hers and Dani feels as though she’s only just come to realize that—in the understanding that she never _can_ be—half of her has been missing for her entire life. Every time she breathes, she smells Jamie’s rose water hair, tastes her gracious lips. Every time she blinks, she sees Jamie’s green eyes, tears held in and pulsing, threatening to spill over any moment. This is the only person Dani will ever long for, her heart has decreed, and yet she is someone that Dani can never have, and anger boils up in her chest, low and curdling. The world is a mercurial, rotten thing. It decides who you are and what you can have without ever giving you a say in the matter.

Hannah says: “I don’t know. Truly.”

Then: “Believing that I had lost my only chance at real love wasn’t an experience I would wish on any other soul.”

Dani nods. Knows the feeling.

Hannah presses on, always on.

“But then Mrs. Wingrave put me in charge of hiring a cook to make sure the children and I always had someone to pay us mind when her and Mr. Wingrave were away. And—”

“You met Owen,” Dani finishes, liking the way that Hannah’s lips turn up into an enchanting smile at the mention of him.

“I met Owen,” Hannah says. 

A companionable silence follows this—just the two of them sitting there quietly, basking in the warmth of a happy ending, no matter the twists and turns life might try to lobby at it. 

“I’m not one to believe that happiness lies in anyone but ourselves,” says Hannah, voice pitched soft and sincere. “But I do believe it can be found by accepting that we deserve to be loved.”

Dani’s breath snags in a quiet sob. In her life, she has cried and she has screamed, and she’s tried to be all things to all people, but no one—not one person—has ever asked her what in the name of all things she wants for herself. What she longs for and who she loves and how she wants to be. _Who_ she wants to be.

Eddie had loved her, hadn’t he? It had been in a way that Dani could not readily return, but it was love all the same. But because she had no physical proof that she was meant to be his, she hadn’t wanted to let him. She’d fought against it as much as she could bear to, so that in the end, Eddie hadn’t even _liked_ her. Not really.

And she thought that was something she’d earned. What she deserved for daring to not be _enough_. It was why she could long for Jamie—someone she cannot keep—as much as she wanted without any expectation of getting anything in return.

She’d thought that was just how it had to be.

But Hannah is smiling at her, kind and hopeful, and Dani realizes she might be wrong.

It’s possible, isn’t it?

In the end, aren’t all things?

So she makes up her mind.

______________

The morning of Jamie and Owen’s first day back, Dani rises with the sun and takes her time getting ready. Combs her hair all the way through twice. Pulls it back and stares at herself in the mirror. Takes it back down. Sprays perfume into the air three times and walks slowly through it. Does it again. Brushes her teeth for three full minutes and gargles with mouthwash twice.

Somehow, she is still in the greenhouse before Jamie arrives. Her heart thumps nervously in her chest and she avoids looking at the bench towards the front of the space. Forces herself to stand still, looking out through the foggy panes of glass to the morning sky, the sun slanting orange through the glass roof. 

After what feels like an eternity, there are footsteps behind her.

When she turns, Jamie is there— _actually_ there; not in her imagination; not in her fevered dreams caught in snatches of restless sleep. She’s there and she’s staring at Dani as if she’s certain that she cannot be real and her big eyes are filled with tears that won’t fall, like ripples in the pond, like wildfire, like—

 _Home_.

Jamie blinks away any sign of emotion and fixes a serious expression upon her gentle features. They stare at each other like it’s been _months_ instead of days. Years, maybe, full of longing neither of them has tried to voice aloud, both of them made more certain of their separate conclusions by the separation. 

Dani stands there, beneath Jamie’s damning gaze, and tells herself to be brave. To just say it. Because if she doesn’t, then she’ll live the rest of her life wondering what might have happened if she had.

“Oh, Poppins. You’re here,” Jamie says softly, hushed awe and quiet disbelief. Sends it across the space between them on the air of a question, perhaps.

And it’s as if all the breath has been stolen out of Dani’s chest, as if she’s been emptied of any practiced speech she might have otherwise prepared. She can’t think, can’t _breathe,_ can’t feel her cold fingers as they twist together in front of her. Because Jamie is there and she may be trying to look unaffected, but she’s on the verge of tears and Dani wants nothing more than to stay in this moment forever. The two of them. Alone. Forget the outside world. Together again.

“So are you,” she says.

They’ve been friendly in this space. Cordial. More than friendly, even. They’ve spoken openly and honestly and have surrendered themselves to this unnamed _thing_ between them; they have been whatever versions they could employ at the time, but this is different: Dani suddenly finds that she cannot fight herself one moment more.

“I have something I need to say,” she says next, hoping that it’s enough to get Jamie to _stay_ —if only for a little while.

“Yeah?” Jamie asks, flicking her eyebrows upwards. “Don’t let me stop you.”

The cold digs tight into Dani’s bones and she takes a few steps forward, trying to close that distance as much as she can manage without Jamie running away. 

“I’m not sorry we kissed,” Dani says, her voice a fever-pitch. “And I know you have a soulmate and we haven’t known each other very long, but I’m not sorry and I don’t regret it. I only regret that I didn’t kiss you sooner.”

Jamie deflates. That’s the word for it. She stands there looking just as lost as Dani feels. She crosses her arms, that tried and true tell. “Dani—”

“For a really long time, I thought that I was broken,” Danie continues. “When...when Eddie got his soul mark and I didn’t, I thought it was because I wasn’t good enough for it. That it meant there was something wrong with me. And when he...I thought it was because I hadn’t loved him enough or... _been_ enough.”

She feels rather than sees as Jamie moves a little closer. “Oh, Dani,” she says, but Dani keeps going.

“So I ran. And I kept myself away from everybody and tried to build these...walls.” She closes her eyes for a moment. Takes a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, Jamie is watching her, waiting patiently, looking like she wants to intervene and is just barely holding herself back. “But the truth is that the moment I met you...it was like they never even existed. And I was running away from everything, yeah. I know. But...I think...I think you might be what I was running toward.”

The air fizzles as the words fall away. It’s electric and sparking, maddening really, and Dani only wishes she’d said it sooner.

“What?”

It’s a nice change: Dani isn’t the only one who’s shaking anymore.

“And I know you already have a soulmate,” she says to Jamie, the soft-eyed, North star love of her life, gone pale and careful. “But every time I touch you, I can’t help wishing it were me.”

Jamie: _blinks_ ; takes in a nervous breath.

“I—” she begins, and then clears her throat. “Dani, I—”

There are a few steps, Dani drawing dangerously close. “You said you’re not sure that your soulmate would want you,” she says, voice as soft as the breeze, not trusting herself to be any louder. “But I do, Jamie. I want—” Her voice breaks and Jamie is still staring at her, struck. “ _I_ want you. And I don’t care about what some stupid mark says. You’re _it_ for me.”

Jamie drops her eyes down to the stone floor and the greenhouse is awash with the early morning light—Dani’s vision is blurred by her stinging tears—but she can see that Jamie’s shoulders are shaking, that she is drawing in on herself.

Dani opens her mouth to apologize, goes to apologize, but she can’t—

With a burst of fervor, Dani grabs Jamie’s hand—slides their skin together—and tugs her forward so she can kiss her with a force that should knock them off their feet, but doesn’t somehow. There’s only a brief moment’s hesitation before Jamie kisses her back, hands moving to Dani’s waist, fingers digging into hips below her below, sharp like knives, like she’ll never let go. And Dani doesn’t want her to. 

Not ever.

It only lasts a few moments before Jamie pulls away, whispering, “Wait,” into Dani’s mouth.

“I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to—” says Dani, pulling away and trying to catch her breath.

“No, not—” Jamie begins.

“I just—”

There’s more she wants to say: that she’s not actually sorry; that she _loves_ her; that she doesn’t care, she’ll take whatever scraps Jamie has left, whatever she can give.

But then Jamie says, “Poppins, wait,” and everything inside of her falls silent.

“I have stuff to say, too,” she says next, but Dani can’t stop staring at her lips. 

Her hands move up to cup Jamie’s face in her palms, to catch her and bring her down to her lips again, but she hesitates at the look in Jamie’s eyes. Brushes her thumb over Jamie’s cheekbones. 

“I...I know what it’s like to feel...lost,” she says. “Like you can’t...find your way. And I’m...My whole life, I haven’t ever wanted to bother with anyone because...because people aren’t worth it. They promise you things they can’t give ya’ and they... _take_ from you things you don’t _have_ and they’re not...worth it.”

Dani blinks. Swallows thickly. Waits for the other shoe to drop.

Jame’s eyebrows furrow, her thumb moving down to trace Dani’s lips. “I didn’t want to be... _meant_ for anybody. I thought it was a load of bollocks, honestly. Not getting a say like that. And I always thought, if I ever found that person I’d tell ’em to bugger off.” She pauses, tongue flicking out to lick her dry lips. Dani’s eyes track the movement. “But now that I…” She blinks. Shakes her head. “I can’t… _do_ that. Because I was wrong. It’s not a trap or a cage or anything like that. It’s...it’s the best thing in the world. And I don’t think I could give it up for anything.”

It’s as if Dani can feel every heartbeat her heart has ever hammered. Every emotion she has ever felt sparks around her: young and furious because one touch, just one, and Eddie wouldn’t stop trailing after her; bright and frightened because Jamie’s lips were softer than she thought they could ever possibly be and—

She tastes them on her tongue. These emotions. The throb of her heart. Her breath, her lungs, expanding and contracting.

“Okay,” she whispers. Resigned. “I...I understand.” 

Except, when she goes to pull away, Jamie refuses to loosen her hold. Keeps her close. Says, “Dani, no, it’s not—”

And Dani struggles. Pulls a little. Has to get out because how _cruel_ is it, expecting her stay after that? 

She says, “Jamie, I—”

But Jamie shakes her head. Pulls her close. Presses their foreheads together and something crosses her face then—some memory or vision of the future—and then she smiles. This teary-eyed, blinding thing. “Dani,” she says. “It’s _you_.”

Dani frowns. “What do you—?”

“This.” She lifts her hand and wraps her fingers around Dani’s wrist, drawing her attention down to those blue fingertips that have haunted Dani’s every thought since she first saw them. “It’s you.”

“I don’t…” Dani shakes her head. Can’t possibly imagine what—

“You’re it for me, too.”

Dani pulls her closer, looks between Jamie’s eyes and the blue on her skin. “You mean—” she begins, but there isn’t room to finish.

Because: “The other day. In your room. When you asked me to unzip you. I...I touched you and—”

And then: “I didn’t tell you because I was worried I would scare you off, and then, that night…”

At once, heat flares in Dani’s chest, sliding up her neck and behind her ears. Remembers:

_I’m afraid of what might happen._

_She’s lost someone._

_I don’t think I can ask her to risk losing someone else._

Before Eddie, before leaving her life behind to move to another country, Dani never considered herself to be brave. Bold. But she spent so many sleepless nights lying alone and thinking and realizing and she was ready to _shoulder_ this for the rest of her life and love as she could and teach and help others and there was bravery to that. There had to be or else there was _nothing_.

And there was bravery with this, too: to diving into something that she did not think she could claim, and by all rights should have never known.

But—

“Are you saying that…” 

She trails off. Can’t even bring herself to say the words.

Fortunately, she doesn’t have to.

Jamie pulls away completely and Dani is worried for exactly two seconds before Jamie thrusts out her hand. 

“Hi, I’m Jamie. It’s really nice to meet you.”

A proper introduction. A redo.

Dani laughs and takes Jamie’s hand. Shakes it.

“Dani Clayton,” she says.

Jamie grins. “Nice to meet you, Dani Clayton. Well, would you look at that.” She pulls her hand back and feigns befuddlement as she looks down at her blue fingers. “It seems my soulmate might be Mary Poppins. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Poppins,’ do you?”

Biting her lip to keep from smiling too wide, Dani shakes her head. “Not at all, but can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away, my dear Poppins,” Jamie says.

“If I’m your soulmate, where’s my mark?”

Jamie pretends to ponder this. “That is funny, isn’t it?” She strokes her chin thoughtfully and Dani can’t stop giggling, can’t stop this feeling spreading through her muscles and veins—this love and devotion for the woman in front of her, so strong she feels like she could faint from it. “Y’know, it might be on your back.”

“Is that so?” Dani asks.

Jamie hums. “I believe it is. I’d love to get you out of those clothes so I can check for myself.”

Here, Dani loses it, falling into Jamie’s arms and lightly punching her in the shoulder as she laughs. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And _you_ , Poppins, are stuck with me,” Jamie says.

“Lucky me.”

She leans up and kisses Jamie again, light and careful. Jamie presses into it, gently, and there is nothing that she can say that will ever be good enough, so she lets the kiss linger for a moment. When she pulls away, Jamie’s eyes hold some emotion that Dani does not recognize.

She only has a moment to wonder about it, though, because then Jamie is kissing her again, hard and fierce, lips and tongue, like she’s _claiming_ her. They’re still not touching completely somehow—a few inches still left between their bodies—and that just won’t do. Dani closes the gap by stepping forward, pressing as close as she can manage without knocking them off balance. She wraps her arms around Jamie’s neck and gets a soft, shocked noise breathed against her lips in return. Jamie is a good kisser. This isn’t surprising, no, but Dani still finds herself shocked. Jamie’s straight, white teeth graze against Dani’s bottom lip, nibbling at it a little before smoothing her tongue over it.

Jamie skates her palms down Dani’s sides to her hips so she can pull her closer, and then one of her hands slips around to rest over her back pocket. Vaguely, Dani recalls having had this done to her before by Eddie once upon a time, but when Jamie flexes her hand in a squeeze, it’s nothing like that _at all_. Dani can’t even remember how to actually form a sentence for a moment. She ends up pressed against one of the counters, tucked away in the corner of the greenhouse, pinned by Jamie’s body and then a thigh slips between her legs and presses up, making her gasp.

“Shit, Dani, is that—” Jamie gulps, pulling back enough to meet Dani’s wide, dark eyes. “Can I—?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Dani hisses and she’s so surprised by herself that she feels dizzy. She didn’t know she could want anyone like _this_. Jamie pulls back the tiniest bit, trying to give her room, but Dani loops her fingers through the belt loops of her jeans and tugs her back in, moving her own thigh closer.

Jamie’s breathing stutters. “ _Dani._ ”

The quality her voice has taken—that gravelly rasp—gives her away. And it isn’t like Dani has a lot of experience with this, but she knows that voice. She knows what it means. She shifts her thigh up between Jamie’s legs and she’s so _warm_. She kind of feels like this isn’t something that’s actually happening right now and the strangeness of it slams her in the chest.

Jamie groans and her eyes are starting to look just the tiniest bit panicked, so Dani kisses her again. “I’m okay,” she breathes, trying to reassure her. “This is good. Don’t stop.”

“The kids,” Jamie breathes, kissing her again. “We should stop. I wanna...I wanna take my time with you, Dani. I—”

“They’re asleep,” Dani tells her. “And...when they’re not, Hannah is there.”

Jamie pulls back a little, her eyes roaming over Dani’s face, looking for some sign of hesitation that isn’t there. “Don’t you want to do this...properly?”

Dani presses her lips to Jamie’s neck, her jaw, the side of her mouth. “‘Properly’ can wait,” she whispers. “I don’t know that I can.”

“Okay,” Jamie finally says. “Okay. I don’t want you to regret—”

Now it’s Dani’s turn to pull back and she does, meeting Jamie’s eyes, brushing her fingers through her curly, brown hair. “I’m not going to regret you. _Ever_.”

Relief bites at Jamie’s cheeks, along with the cold, morning air, but she smiles all the same. “Never’s a long time,” she says.

Dani kisses her. “Here’s hoping.”

And then Jamie’s hands feel like they’re everywhere at once as she leans back in. On Dani’s hips, on her ribs, skimming her fingers just below her breasts, cupping her neck and drawing her close.

That’s how it goes for a while—Dani pressed back into the stinging countertop and Jamie more shy and nervous than she thought her capable of, carefully touching her with light fingers that begin to linger more and more just beneath the underwire of her bra, through her thick sweater. Like she’s nervous she’s going to hurt her or something and Dani kind of wants to just grab her wrists and put her hands on her breasts already, but she can’t. She’s never guided someone into feeling her up before.

Instead, she makes this impatient noise in the back of her throat and pushes her own coat off her shoulders and onto the floor. She starts unzipping Jamie’s coveralls next, pushing them down her shoulders and arms, trying to pull her free. It’s too cold to pull the shirt she’s wearing over Jamie’s head, but Dani can still slip her hand up to press against the curve of her spine. Can still slip her fingertips beneath the edge of Jamie’s jeans.

At the touch, Jamie’s eyes drift closed, her breath coming out in pants through parted lips. She reaches forward and tugs Dani’s sweater up a little, revealing the pale of her stomach in a thin line that makes Jamie look completely _struck_. 

Fortunately, she doesn’t do much more than that, which is good—there’ll plenty of time for that the next time they do this—because Dani can’t actually remember what underwear she put on that morning. She’d been in too much of a rush. And she’d rather not be in her skivvies when it’s cold like this, no matter how hot Jamie’s touch leaves her.

Her chest feels heavy and everything is foggy, like she’s halfway in a dream or underwater or in outer space. Like she could explode any moment.

“I wish I could see you,” Jamie whispers, kissing Dani’s nose, then her eyelids.

“Next time,” Dani tells her and Jamie pulls back, smiling.

“Yeah?”

Dani nods. “Yes. Now kiss me again.”

“Aye, aye.” Jamie gives her a goofy little grin and kisses her, flicking her tongue back into Dani’s mouth and making Dani gasp.

And Dani can’t stop touching her—can’t stop running her palms over Jamie’s soft, skinny ribs and running her fingers through her unruly hair. She wants to dig her nails into Jamie’s hips and pull her in, closer, and she tries to pick that apart piece-by-piece—is it a soulmate thing?—because she’s never wanted to do that to anyone before.

When Jamie ducks her head into Dani’s shoulder, sucking at her neck and making her whine and press her eyes shut, Dani can smell her deodorant—something natural and vaguely lemon-scented; the light smell of her cologne—and _want_ slams into her chest hard enough to knock her breath away.

Jamie slips her hand underneath Dani’s sweater and slides it up, cupping one of her breasts in her hand through the fabric of her bra. 

“Jesus, Jamie,” Dani whispers as Jamie’s fingers squeeze, somehow managing to catch her nipple between two of her fingers despite the barrier between their skin. She arches a little. 

Jamie laughs in a way that’s so charming, Dani is temporarily stunned. “That good?”

“So good.”

Her cool fingers slip beneath her bra next, mimicking the previous motion and then she’s pulling Dani’s sweater up enough to duck her head, pulling down on her bra. A warm tongue flicks over her nipple and Dani groans, tipping her chin so she can see.

“Fuck,” Jamie curses into her skin, like she can’t believe this is happening either. 

One hand flies up so Dani can weave her fingers into Jamie’s hair again as she watches Jamie close her lips around one breast, then the other. “Jamie, _please_.”

Dani thinks she hears her curse under her breath in that gentle and awed tone she keeps using, and then Jamie stands back up. Her hands move down to grapple with the button of Dani’s jeans, rushing to clumsily undo it and pull her zipper down. 

“Dani,” she says, “are you—?”

“Yes,” Dani mumbles, pulling Jamie even closer. “I’m great. _Please_.”

Relief floods Jamie’s expression and she nods, licking her lips, and then her hand slides down Dani’s stomach and into her pants and—

 _Oh_.

At the first touch, Dani groans, can’t help it, and arches against her.

“God, Dani, you’re so—” Jamie begins, looking at her in awe.

Knowing what she’s going to say next, Dani curls her fingers back into Jamie’s hair—too embarrassed to handle her saying _that_ quite yet—and kisses her again. Fortunately, Jamie seems to get the hint to keep moving.

So she does.

“You’re a dream,” Jamie whispers, as her fingers slide around and then _in_ , moving with a steady confidence that probably shouldn’t surprise Dani the way it does. “Better than.”

Clearly, she knows what she’s doing and she knows it well. She does this _thing_ with her thumb that Dani’s only other partner never tried or knew enough to do—this combination of flicking and swirling. It makes Dani groan and swear and push herself down on Jamie’s hand, her vision going white behind her eyelids.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she hears herself say, her voice unfamiliar to her own ears. One of her hands comes out to rest on the countertop behind her, to grip it white-knuckle-tight because she’s worried she’s going to collapse. “ _Yes_.” 

It’s so good. Jamie is so good and Dani is so in love with her already. Jamie with her wide, careful eyes and her blinding smile, her impassioned expressions. Jamie, who is her _soulmate_ and Dani had been preparing to try her best to get Jamie to _stay_ with her and forget about destiny, but she hadn’t known enough to expect this.

But it’s real. It isn’t a dream. Dani’s head tips back and her eyes find the ceiling, tracing the faintly yellow diamond of light coming through the dusty glass. A slim arm slips around her waist, pulling her closer, and it’s too much. Way too much.

She feels dizzy and off balance and so nervous that she can’t actually breathe because _this is really happening_. 

“Jamie,” she hisses, and Jamie chooses then to stop kissing the side of her jaw, to pull back and look at her, those green eyes so imploring, so entranced, another finger slipping into her, and Dani feels the exact moment that she tips over the edge. Her nails dig into the metal countertop, her other hand clenching the fabric of Jamie’s t-shirt. Those quick fingers keep moving, stroking and pumping through the final waves and bringing her back down, and she drops her forehead forward to rest on Jamie’s bony shoulder.

After a moment, Jamie pulls her hand out, resting it on the counter on Dani’s other side and letting Dani’s weight slump into her. She presses a kiss to the top of Dani’s head, rubbing her back through her sweater with her other hand.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Jamie whispers in the near-silence, once Dani pulls her head back up. Her expression is so open and honest that it breaks Dani’s heart. She wonders if anyone else has ever gotten to her like this and has to blink away the urge to cry as a surge of startling affection washes over her. “If it has to be anyone, I’m so glad it’s you, Dani.”

“Me too,” Dani says.

They just stare at each other for a second. Dani’s eyes keep darting down to Jamie’s lips, pink and smudged from being kissed too much.

There’s more to say, really there is. But there’s a knock on the doorway of the greenhouse and Dani’s heart jumps into her throat. They’re lucky, really, because Jamie is some sort of plant hoarder and they’re mostly blocked from view. From this angle, whoever it is shouldn’t see much more than Jamie’s back, which gives Dani time to pull her bra and sweater down, button her jeans back up. And then Jamie ducks down to grab her coveralls and tie the arms around her waist. 

They’re still ruffled, yes, but at least they are tucked back into their clothes enough to prevent too big a scandal.

It’s Hannah, standing in the doorway with an amused smile. Her eyes flick over Dani and Jamie in turn, looking at their messy hair and wrinkled clothes. It’s clear from her expression that she knows exactly what it is that she’s just walked in on.

“Hannah, hi!” Dani says, her voice too loud. Jamie winces. “Hi, we were just—”

“Flora and Miles are having breakfast,” Hannah tells her. “I told them I would come and find you.”

Dani nods a little too vigorously, her cheeks and ears hot. “Right, thank you!”

“Too loud,” Jamie mutters, shaking her head. 

Dani throws her a panicked look and then turns her attention back to Hannah. “I’ll be right there.”

Hannah purses her lips like she’s trying to keep from laughing, but nods. “Sure thing. You take your time, love.”

With that, she turns and heads away, back towards the house, leaving Dani to whirl around to Jamie in a panic.

“She _knew,_ Jamie,” she says and she wants to feel embarrassed about that, but one look from Jamie and she feels herself calm. “Holy crap, she _knows_. I’m so...God, this is so embarrassing.”

Jamie laughs and wraps her arms around Dani’s waist, pulling her into an embrace. “Coulda been worse,” she says. “Might have been one of the kids.”

Dani swats her shoulder. “Don’t say that.” 

“Hannah won’t ever bring it up again,” Jamie says. “Don’t worry about it.”

A kiss is pressed to her cheek and Dani sighs, lets the moment linger just a few breaths longer. “You’re worth it, you know,” she says, soft and easy. 

“Worth what?” Jamie asks.

When she pulls away, something flashes in Jamie’s eyes—the same fervor that had been there when they were pressed together just minutes before, her body warm, her hand quick, and Dani hadn’t known it could be like _that_.

“The wait,” she whispers. “The risk.” And she pulls Jamie into another kiss.

She wonders if she’ll get used to the way it feels to touch Jamie like this, to _be_ touched by Jamie’s gentle fingers, her smoothing thumb. Everything she was told it would be like. Everything anyone ever told her to expect. More, because nothing anyone could have said could have properly explained that love can be like _this_ —that it would feel like everything she’s ever been or ever wanted to be has come together all at once. 

For the first time, she can see the years rolling out in front of her. She can imagine the nights, and cooking dinner together. A house of their own and a dog and maybe—somehow—a baby one day, too. A commitment that she’ll never, ever break because how could she? 

Most of all, though, when she thinks about the future now—that shadowed, grim thing that used to plague her thoughts at all hours of the day—all she can see is Jamie.

And isn’t that a blessing of its own?

“So are you,” Jamie says, breathless, in a tone that implies strongly that, no matter what, this answer will never change.

This is _I love you_ , even without saying so. This is _be brave, love_ and _stay with me_ and _you’re finally here_. It is the first time that either of them has said exactly what they mean. And in this moment, they understand that there is nothing to be afraid of.

______________ 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¹ The Haunting of Bly Manor, 1x4, “The Way It Came”
> 
> thar she blows.
> 
> hope you guys liked it! tell if me you yelled!

**Author's Note:**

> ivy and nora are my personal children. leave them out of this. unless you liked them. then i crave the validation.
> 
> title from “Shatter Us” by The Rocket Summer. good song. check it out. i highly recommend. big fat Jamie/Dani mood.
> 
> throw your thoughts or perhaps prompts at me on [tumblr](https://andawaywego.tumblr.com/). i promise i’m not as bitter as i seem.
> 
> also! there is now a part 2 ft. Jamie’s side of the story and doing things “properly”.


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